U3A Writing: Word Rage
In this delicious article Cynthia Bloxsidge rewites a famous war-time speech of Winston Churchill as the present-day word manglers would have it.
This language mangling is getting to me. I’m paranoid about it.
Paranoid? Another of those words which is constantly raising its ugly head. Let’s say I’m compulsive obsessive. That’s even worse. Better to be deeply troubled.
What would Churchill, Kennedy or Martin Luther King make of today’s verbal diarrhoea?
We do have the speeches of Donald Rumsfeld. Remember his, “There are things that we don’t know that we don’t know. There are things that we know that we don’t know and there are things that we don’t know that we know.” Simple phrases. What else could you expect from people who drive on the wrong side of the road?
How would Churchill sound in today’s New Speak, that middle management verbiage which wastes reams of paper and says nothing?
Take his, “We will fight on the beaches. We will fight in the fields. We will never surrender” speech. It would emerge as something like this:
“We will utilise our forward strategic planning capability and will defend those silicon strips of coastline which serve as a barrier to the ocean.
“We will bring such forces to bear as will safeguard those portions of rural holdings which have not been subjected to urban development.
“We will not sign any United Nations Security Council documents pertaining to treaties, armistice or exit plans which would hinder our completion of this armed conflict.”
The rumbling sound in the distance is Winston rotating in his lead-lined, timber-clad sarcophagus, which is deemed to be under the official health act of Her Majesty’s Government two point six metres below extraneous matter which shall be designated herein as earth.
